Valve Have Three Announcements For Next Week

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We got an email from Valve! It says: “We have three announcements to make beginning with the first one on Monday morning.” What are they about? Well they’re about “the steps we’re taking to make Steam more accessible on televisions and in the living room.”

So probably a Linux-based Steam box, then. The three announcements are going to appear here. How exciting. Well, it would be if I could ever claim the living room back from family members. Sigh. Don’t worry, desktop, I’ll never (be able to) leave you.

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To add something of more substance: I still hope they will add local game streaming some day. E.g. the game runs on my PC, but I control it from my living room on my TV (with a little client “let’s call it SteamBox” box).

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While we should not reply to bots, just imagine that over the years, all this spam has really been the most elaborate marketing plan Valve has thought up, and all these Bots will suddenly align and start spamming information about whatever the Steambox or whatnot actually is. That or if you take all the links and put them into C++ (backwards) they will actually compile and make Half-Life 3!

Well actually, computer programs are really just very specific numbers; it’s entirely possible that if you take all the random digits they spew out, arrange them one after the other, and try to execute it on the right hardware it would run…

I hear Valve actually has a room of infinite chimps on infinite computers, and at the end of every day Gabe presses “compile” on the code they created. He’s been doing this every single day and will keep doing it until one day when he presses “compile”, Half-Life 3 will start. And it will be perfect.

I think it means that Gabe Newell knows how to troll the press and public. It worked on me; I know they’re not announcing … that thing we all want … but somehow I can’t let go of the chance that they might.

Ha, watch: announcement two will tease that announcement three is about a game. Announcement three will turn out to be … Left 4 Dead 3.

Don’t be silly, it obviously isn’t Half Life 3. You know what I think? Three is made from the addition of one and two, now there has already been a Ricochet 1, so they are obviously planning to add to this by releasing Ricochet 2.

Calling it right now. One of them is going to be a streaming stick like Chromecast. Your Steam PC pushes streaming video data to the streaming client. Control input could done through a separate device or another piece of hardware.

With any luck this will result in Valve and Steam taking over our living rooms completely, with our families becoming a grotesque mass of interconnected writhing, slime-drenched flesh like something from Brian Yuzna’s most fevered dreams.
Or maybe it’s something more conventional and boring. Like a new Steam feature. Or the mythical lesser-spotted Steambox.

It’s not going to be a console because Valve isn’t run by a bunch of apes who get their jollies by smearing their own shit over their own faces. They say this is for 2014? Do you people really expect them to launch their Steam Box as a competing console against two brands with far more brand recognition than Valve will ever have?

Here’s a far more conservative look into what it probably is:

1. HDMI/equivalent streaming, maybe with monitor passthrough.
2. Comes with a controller, probably with a Playstation/Xbox equivalent home button.
3. Built-in software solution for launching Big Picture mode and activating the streaming services with that button.
4. Works in your home only/at first, since Valve doesn’t have any game streaming infrastructure yet.
5. Either a developer API for controller support or built-in XInput emulation.
6. Priced at no more than $150.

They said they’re taking steps to make Steam more accessible on televisions, and a $400+ PConsole doesn’t really do that. At that point, they’re competing for brand awareness with two of the two biggest names in gaming, which is going to be a major uphill battle. It’s also a pretty terrible value proposition for the hardcore set since a $400 PConsole is going to be dramatically underpowered compared to the computers they already own. So basically you’ve knocked out the only people who would buy this sort of thing.

A home streaming service akin to the NVidia Shield but through an HDMI streamer and for TVs is the only thing that makes sense here. Anything else is like throwing money into a blast furnace.

Hmm, wouldn’t that kinda ruin the point of what the Steam Box was supposed to be, though? If you require a PC that’s beefy enough to play games and do low-latency video streaming, you automatically make this a super-niche product (not unlike the Shield, actually), and you completely miss the low-end that a lot of people think Valve is trying to target.

I mean, that doesn’t rule it out of course, but I’d think that there’s significant value in a standalone product even if you have to compete with the current heavyweights. Make it a device for people who want to play PC games with their friends but don’t want to abandon the console interface and/or buy a more expensive GP/gaming machine.

The box would do the streaming. It’d just hook right up through HDMI or DVI+Line In for audio, with USB to handle the controller passthrough. The PC doesn’t do any work other than playing the game itself. Them making a box to target anyone isn’t going to matter when there’s currently 3 consoles on the market with 2 more coming to market. They need to leverage Steam as a platform and branch that to the TV, and trying to do that with a new console is foolish.

Is this “steam box” a console? I haven’t wrapped my mind around that one yet.
I mean, it is probably semantics at this point, but what with the focus of RPS and all, I was curious if there would be coverage.

Sticking with the space theme, didn’t Valve show concept art from a space game at some point a while back? “Stars Of” something I believe it was called?

Also, JJ Abrams has mentioned in recent interviews that he’s been in talks with Valve about “multiple projects”, so I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those projects gets announced as a launch title for the Steam Box.

Of all the above comments, the one that I like more is the Valve Chromecast. A device to “liberate” your PC, to move gaming anywhere on your house where you have a TV.

Sony has something similar with the VitaTV, so having one for the PC kinda makes sense. Also starting with a device that is cheap may allow more people to buy it. Perhaps a good way to start hardware bussines.

Anyway we have absolutelly no idea what this is, could be something completely different. Hell.. maybe is a SmartTV.

link to store.steampowered.com
It looks more like a
* family games share
* split screen mode for source games, maybe source 2
* ricochet 2 version for split screen
Would be nice to see new game, but they do eveything but not what people waiting for

– Steam’s EULA gets an addendum which requires you to send three drops of blood from your first born to USA.
– The Greenlight process gets replaced by a random generator.
– Gabe has made a pizza and it’s ready

Valve knows goddamn well that there’s only one announcement anyone wants to hear from them. And it’s got nothing to do with “the steps we’re taking to make Steam more accessible on televisions and in the living room.”

The common factor with them all is the O. Just like how the common factor between all of Valve projects is that they all involve games. So maybe O is a game? O… Orange? A new Orange Box? Would [O ] be said game inside of something? [ ] is sort of a box shape? A game inside of a box? What about O+O? 2 games? 2 people playing one game? Maybe splitscreen support for L4D and Portal 2 on Steam(box)? Or perhaps it’s an official announcement of the game sharing. One O being the games on my account, and the other O being the ones on yours. As friends we can now add them together. And what is that black hole lookin’ thing? It is also a circle, like the O. Is there a connection? It also is an O inside of a [ box ].

I normally don’t put this kind of thought into marketing, but with Valve there’s always something deeper. Wishful thinking wise, I’m placing my bets on a new game, the obvious Steambox announcements, and an official announcement of the game sharing. Fingers crossed the new game is Half-Life 3. Valve is reaching (if they’ve not already passed) the point where we can no longer go “Oh, Valve” and roll our eyes about no HL3. If they announce a new game that isn’t HL3 after so long I think people are just going to be angry. We’ve been angry for a while, but we always knew they were working on it. Spitting out Portal 3 or a new IP would really piss people off, and I can’t see Valve doing that.

Besides, what better way to sell a new system than to put Half-Life 3 on it? Would you buy a Steambox for free exclusive Early-Access to HL3?

single O means a single player, O+O means multiplayer but in the same room (i.e. something like split screen i guess) since the blue black hole thingy is on a TV, so this is probably a living room. [O ] could be one player with one slot vacant (sharing?).

Upon reading your post, i feel that [o ] could be the orange box, except, why is there a space on the right?

Actually I was thinking, a big hole in my idea is that if the O represents a game (specifically Half-Life 3) it’d be silly to announce that first. Being such a big deal for Valve, it’d draw steam (no pun intended) away from the following two announcements.

While it could be HL3 and two following announcements directly related to it. If I were Valve’s marketers (which sadly I am not) I would save HL3 for the last.

1) FIrst one is either SteamOS or the SteamBox Lite that would stream from a gaming computer.
2) Second one is the Creative/Intel Senz3D camera being integrated by default into the SteamOS/Steambox.
3) Third one is based on the first one. If the first one is SteamOS, then I believe the third one is going to be the Steambox with SteamOS included shown for the first time and detailed or some kind of On-Live-like streaming service detailed. If the first one is the SteamBox Lite, then toss in the possibility that it may be the more “hardcore” version of the Steambox.

Notes: It’s worth acknowledging the proximity to AMD’s Hawaii announcements next week and also to Bay Trail that just launched.

Way out there, we might eventually see the PS4 (and PS Vita TV?) being a capable box to receive streams from Steam PC’s to let you have your Steam on your HDTV through your consoles. Sony and Valve have worked together on Steam before, so it wouldn’t be the first time they’d done that and doing this would continue that, “We love indies, we love to do the fringe things, we want to embrace all gamers” mantra Sony’s been preaching all year in the face of MS’s authoritarian moves of late.

Game streaming seems like a logical thing for Steam to embrace, given their bigger and bigger moves of late (ie., greenlight, coupons, cards, early access, library sharing). Especially in the context of the 10 year anniversary of Steam and the move to push out more games via Greenlight last month.

I like to imagine Steam getting this right, allowing streaming of your Steam games either from your own PC and eventually from servers, instead of just choosing one or the other like everyone else. This neatly gets around Apple’s lockdown on letting Steam have its own games on iOS and lets even low power devices have access to the Steam library if they will but make an HTML5 “site” that enables the functionality. This creates a universal Steam app for all modern platforms.

Re. the trackball: a guy on Ebay in the US was modifying 360 controllers to replace the right thumbstick with a trackball from late-2010 to mid-2012 but has since ceased. He sold over 75 of them, you can check his ebay feedback on http://www.trackballcontroller.com. There’s vids on Youtube showing how well trackball aiming works on Xbox/PC. I missed out tho but apparently he’s working on v2 for next-gen controllers.

Re. the chatpad: it’s very underrated. It’s a proper backlit keyboard replacement with 2 mod keys for 80 effective keys. Microsoft’s controller drivers don’t support the chatpad but an unofficial driver just for the chatpad was created a few years back for wired controllers. It wasn’t until early this year 2013 that someone got the chatpad working wirelessly which was a big breakthrough.

It’s so frustrating how little acknowledgement there is from major gaming/peripheral companies and the gaming press about the current state of mouse+keyboard replacement possibilities. If they spread the word, maybe big peripheral makers like Logitech/Razer would step in. So few people know about the options available, not even Pinnacle/Xpadder which can be used to provide fully mappable modern controller support for any PC game even in DOSbox.

Microsoft could easily and greatly improve the global state of HTPC control / couch PC gaming if they would simply release an alternate 360 pad with an r-thumb trackball, plus add proper wired/wireless chatpad support to the PC drivers. If a single man can replace the right-thumbstick with a trackball in his spare time, surely MS can.

Personally, i don’t think they need to replace it, just make a decent one that feels comfortable on the lap. I’m thinking a bluetooth keyboard, with a trackball attachment (no numpad) that fits via USB on the left or right side of the keyboard remaining flush with it (so it actually ends up no bigger than a keyboard with a numpad, and you always have a free USB port on one side or the other), and a cushioned/gel underside.

If it’s designed right (ie. when you press a button on the far side of the keyboard, it doesn’t tip), then it would be a compliment to a joypad, rather than thinking one needs to replace the other. After all, no one wants to play strategy/management sims with a joypad.

You’re spot on about the lack of support for couch-gaming PC peripherals, considering the growing number of couch PC gamers. Personally, I use a controller in my left hand and a wireless mouse in my right, resting on the arm of the sofa, as I’ll never be able to use an analogue stick for aiming as long as I draw breath (movement, though, that’s fine). I’ve been playing like this for years but am constantly surprised at the utter lack of peripherals aimed at me.

I had always used a X360/Xpadder combination, but more recent games like Metro 2033, Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider forced me to look for an alternative controller because of the way they automatically recognise gamepads (which causes a conflict with Xpadder if you want to use custom controls). I found that there is only one dedicated PC wireless gamepad on the market. One. The Logitech F710. No wonder it’s the one that Valve endorses because there aren’t any others!

And guess what, it turned out that the proprietary key-mapping software that comes with the F710 causes a conflict with Steam when they’re both running! The irony isn’t even funny.

If just one of these announcements is about a new controller aimed at couch PC gamers like me, I’ll be happy.

If it’s a Steam box I think it’s likely similar to a Roku for games and it streams your PC games local to your TV, mobile, or Tablet which is a great alternative to paying 100’s of dollars for a standalone system. It seem likely that this is going to happen. I actually want something like this…